


flower/serpent/spider

by boomerangst (SevereChill)



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Allusions to Suicide, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/M, Hate Sex, Murder, femme fatale!Kikyou
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 01:07:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11173839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevereChill/pseuds/boomerangst
Summary: If he was going to kill her (and he was), then at least she would die satisfied.AU in which Kikyou is less honey and more trap.





	flower/serpent/spider

**Author's Note:**

> look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it  
> — _Macbeth_ i.v

Kikyou’s reflection gazed back at her with a calm she did not feel.

_You can do this_ , she told herself. _You are the_ only one _who can do this._ It was true, but did not comfort her. Perhaps she was beyond comforting.

If she looked too long into the mirror, she would see herself from the outside. She would look beyond the surface things—the dark, glossy hair, the black eyes, the skin like porcelain: matte and thickly brittle, rough and not-rough. For a moment, she would glimpse instead the whole greater than the sum of its parts—that unique intangible _something_ that made her _Kikyou_ and no one else—and her stomach would twist with a sensation that was equal parts pity and revulsion.

She did not look too long into the mirror.

Instead she went through the usual motions of brushing and arranging, powdering and painting, seeing not the woman but the hairs out of place, the shadows beneath the skin that needed covering. She cupped cool water in her hands and brought it to her face in a mockery of purification. She rinsed off the makeup where it was imperfect and reapplied it and did not allow her hand to tremble. It was all a ritual now, a metamorphosis into the flawless flower of her namesake. Frail and pale and pliant.

Kikyou never stayed with him, after. To lie beside Naraku in the dark might be regarded as dangerous, but to slide from the sheets and slip from the room and leave him was more dangerous still. Kikyou knew this, knew she was risking everything by endangering the flower facade she had worked so hard to cultivate. She did it anyway and did not think about why.

Besides, even when she left Naraku, he did not leave her. This was a choice. She did not wash the traces of him from her body, nor even attempt to purge his image from behind her eyes—he lived within her, now, and belonged there.

How unfortunate for him. He really had no idea. He thought himself the only monster.

Kikyou’s arms and legs seemed to grow heavier as she dressed and gathered her things. Most of the time she inhabited her body with threadbare detachment, an insubstantial animus piloting its earthly shell by rote, but today she was almost rudely aware of the bones and sinews twisting and crowding beneath her skin. It was as though she had been infected with a putrid bacterial dread that had spread through her limbs and weighed them down—and now they were unwilling or unable to carry her to the source of more contagion.

Kikyou felt the malaise seeping into her bones and summarily overruled it. She had her orders. She had no room for weakness or second thoughts. The work she did was important, and Kikyou tried to be proud of it. Her seduction of Naraku had allowed her access to valuable information, information that had saved lives, somewhere. If only it hadn’t grown so difficult to picture them—that nebulous greater good, those distant, intangible people she had whored herself out to protect. Naraku—his hot breath lifting the hairs on her neck, his cold fingers digging into her arms—was far more real than any of them.

Naraku could easily have sent a car to collect her—he certainly had the resources—but he seemed to derive satisfaction from forcing her to come to him. Perhaps he saw it as proof of her devotion, a test of some kind. He was forever testing her, forever searching—for what, Kikyou wasn’t certain. In spite of her intensive training for this mission, she knew she wasn’t a particularly accomplished actress. And Naraku’s intuition was second to none. Deep down, Kikyou sometimes suspected that she hadn’t fooled him at all, not even for a second—that he saw her flirtatious flower facade for the falsehood it was, and what was more, that it was the source of her appeal to him. The more he detected her heavily veiled disinterest, the more desperate he became for her to show him some flicker of genuine emotion, however negative, however small. Merely to pollute her body was not enough for him—he thirsted to possess her soul.

Kikyou had so far disappointed him, if that was his true desire. The more he touched her, the more he held her and fucked her and told her she was his, the less he _felt_ her, and the more she felt herself receding. Beneath his hands she became flesh rendered in marble, unyielding and inanimate. It seemed no amount of silken petals and seductive pretense could fully mask her scaly indifference.

But today was different. Kikyou felt it bubbling in the veins she was so strangely hyperaware of—something like anticipation, a separate current from the churning dread. The disembodied voice on the radio that passed along Kikyou’s gathered intelligence to those higher-ups who used it for the vague saving of lives had never had the power to rouse her so in the past. This morning’s interaction had been typically brief and colorless—codes, reports, confirmations, orders. Naraku had done such and such things, spoken to such and such people, visited such and such places. Sometimes it amused Kikyou to imagine giving a _full_ report of everything she did with Naraku—droning on in a flat voice as she described in lurid and minute detail all of the various ways he tried to force her to warm-blooded life and animal passion. He always made her look at him while she climaxed, as if he hoped that eye contact might allow him to finally _reach_ her somehow—but even at those moments Kikyou’s eyes were not windows to her soul. Perhaps she didn't have one. Despite his best efforts she was no more tangible to Naraku than she was to the voice on the radio. He was being slowly driven mad by the realization that he could not ruin what he could not touch.

But Naraku’s Kikyou-induced madness in its early stages was a nuance that would surely be lost on the radio-voice, so she had kept quiet, listened obediently to today’s orders, and signed obediently off to rendezvous with Naraku.

The strangely physical anticipation manifested as goosebumps trailing across her mostly-bare back and down her bare arms as she waited in Naraku’s sitting room. She was late. There was no telling whether he would find this insupportable or charming. Even more unusually, _he_ was late. He often made Kikyou wait long minutes or even hours before making his abrupt appearance, as a lazy spider toys with a fly trapped in its web, first drawing out the hour of the victim’s death and then descending with grotesque suddenness to gorge itself. But once again, today was different. Today the place was oddly empty of scuttling subordinates, and Kikyou got the feeling that Naraku was not making her wait in his typical irritating fashion but had been detained for some legitimate—or legitimate for him, which meant crooked—reason.

“You're late,” said Naraku, making his sudden arachnid entrance at last.

Kikyou did not ask how he knew this. “So are you,” she replied, slipping into the various bodily and facial adjustments necessary to broadcast sexual and romantic interest. The flower facade was in place at last, petals falling gently open in invitation.

“Where were you this morning? I stopped by personally,” asked Naraku, ignoring it.

“I stepped out for supplies,” lied Kikyou, who had been shut up in her secret room with the radio, making her report.

“Hmm,” said Naraku, moving closer until he loomed over her. Kikyou held in a sigh, knowing just what was coming next. “And you didn't think I’d miss you?” He traced a finger along her jaw, painfully slow and full of dark promise—and abruptly withdrew, settling in a chair on the other side of the room.

Kikyou hid her slight surprise as skillfully as she hid her considerable contempt, and allowed her thoughts to drift. Other people interrupted her thoughts, but Naraku always let her think them. He stayed silent and watched her with the slightest leer, as if he _knew_ them, as if he could see inside her mind with perfect clarity and it amused him to look. Kikyou did not react to these voyeuristic invasions, except to wonder—if he could _really_ see what she was thinking, would he still smile?

Right now, for example, she was imagining how simple it would be to end his miserable life. She’d cross the room in three long steps, letting him think she was making some sexual overture—then snap off one of the iron scrolls that decorated the fireplace (the closer one was loose) and smash it into the side of his head. It would be easy, like crushing a spider. She wouldn’t even have to touch him—though on second thought, a more intimate method of killing might be more satisfactory. The idea of looking into his eyes while she felt the life drain from his body beneath her hands held a certain appeal. Her fingers twitched at the thought, and she tucked them away in the pockets of her dress.

Kikyou did not allow herself the comforting lie that Naraku’s influence had wrought some toxic change and made her into this cold and ruthless creature—she knew she had always been like this, deep down. It was why she was perfect for this mission. It was why she deserved him.

“Are you waiting for me to apologize?” asked Kikyou, the silence managing to unnerve her at last.

Naraku rose in a single, swift movement and began to pace back and forth. “Kikyou.” Her name was a ragged plea on his lips. “I thought I had made myself clear. That you understood how I felt about you.” God, how she hated it when he tried to be sincere. It didn’t suit him at all. A moment more and he left his pacing to kneel before her, reaching up to cup her face with fingers too long to be attractive. “How many times must I tell you how desperately I love you—how I desire you in _every_ way? You are the only thing I have ever truly wanted, and every second you continue to deny me your heart is a thousand years of torment.” He was right about one thing: he had delivered countless variations of this speech. Kikyou found she was not particularly impressed with today’s—he was capable of better. Did he truly expect to win her over with such tired clichés? 

She focused every last vestige of energy on trying to sound convincing. “There’s no need for speeches, Naraku. I’ve told you that I lo—”

“And I’ve told _you_ what would happen if you _lied to me_ ,” hissed Naraku. His transformation from abject to menacing took less than a heartbeat. The pupils of his unnerving eyes bloomed wide, his lips pulled back in a hideous, feral sneer. His fingers dug painfully into Kikyou’s face. For a moment, she thought he meant to hit her.

“It’s not a lie,” she protested, voice devoid of emotion. She would have to do better than that. She tried again. “I _do_ love you.”

Naraku let go with such force that Kikyou saw stars. “No, you _betrayed_ me,” he snarled, rising to his feet. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out you’ve been working for my enemies?”

So that was it. The other shoe had finally dropped. A great wave of relief passed through Kikyou’s body, washing all of her dread and anticipation away. At last, he knew the truth. He would probably kill her now. It seemed a fitting outcome.

“For months now I’ve wondered why you stayed by my side, when I knew—I _know_ —you do not, _cannot_ love me. At first I thought it must be because you sought my wealth, my power—but you are above such trivial desires,” Naraku spat, turning away in disgust. “I should have known you would never allow a man like me to touch you without some _noble_ ulterior motive.”

He sounded almost…hurt. Vulnerable. A vicious laugh swelled in Kikyou’s chest, and she unleashed it. “You seem disappointed,” she observed. “Did you really think I could feel love for a vile thing like _you_?” Here, at last, was the pleasure she had denied herself for so long—that of making him suffer. She couldn’t resist twisting the knife. If he was going to kill her (and he was), then at least she would die satisfied.

Naraku’s answering laugh was bitter. “I’ve come to believe you incapable of love and lust—incapable of _any_ kind of passion.”

Now it was Kikyou’s turn to feel hurt—not that she showed it. How close to correct he was. But hatred too was a kind of passion, and Kikyou was capable of hating more passionately than Naraku had ever loved. _Shall I show him?_ she thought, fist tightening in her pocket.

“I suppose it was simply my cruel fate,” said Naraku, “to lose my heart to someone—some _thing_ —so utterly emotionless.”

“You son of a bitch,” spat Kikyou, rising to her feet. “I _despise_ you. How’s that for an emotion?”

But Naraku wasn’t finished. “I should kill you,” he murmured, turning to face her but speaking more to himself. “Were you anyone else, you would already be dead. And yet, how can I harm you, even now?” he took her face in his hands again. “Shall I kill the thing I love most in all the world?”

There it was again— _thing_. What a loathsome fool he was, to accuse her of lacking humanity while he slaughtered his way across countries.

He released her. “What is the point of hurting you when you feel nothing?” He gestured toward the open door. “Leave now, Kikyou. You will not get a second chance.”

He meant it, she knew. Freedom beckoned. If she walked away now, she could leave this place and this man and this wretched charade behind forever—she could be rid of him.

But he would have the last word.

Kikyou’s feet stayed firmly planted. “I. Am not. A _thing_ ,” she said quietly.

Naraku’s face was a rictus of savage hurt. “Then _prove it_ ,” he challenged, “or leave.”

When her lips collided with his, it was like a dam bursting. Violence was hers. Vengeance was hers. _Life_ was hers. She was no delicate, inanimate flower—her immobility was patience, not paralysis. Her petals were scales. She could shed her flower facade like dead skin. She was a serpent in the lightning instant between stillness and strike.

The hands on her face tightened like a vise. Naraku kissed back as if to cave in her skull with the pressure. If she had been the delicate flower of his imagination, she might have shattered, but something else happened instead: her mind came crashing back into her body once and for all, and with a sudden clarity Kikyou knew that the two had never been separate. She had deceived herself as thoroughly as she had deceived him—but now the truth of her was laid bare. Like every time before, she came to him willingly, but now for the first time she came to him _wanting_. This insatiable, abysmal hunger—was this what it felt like to be Naraku?

Kikyou’s right hand was still in her pocket. She unclenched her fingers and flexed them, feeling the scrape of sinew over bone, the pulse in her fingertips as she reached up to bury them in Naraku’s hair. His hands slid to her neck and then lower, not gentle but not quite able to deliver a killing blow, either—not when she had come to life just for him, saved all of her rage just for him. He drank it up like a shriveled, cracked creature of the desert tasting water for the first time.

_Was_ this _what you wanted?_ Kikyou wanted to ask, clawing at his clothes while his teeth sank into her collarbone. _Was_ this _what you’ve been searching for all this time?_ She couldn’t form the words with lips too numb from the force of that first kiss. Instead she yanked Naraku up to her level and bit him back. At last, they were speaking a language they both understood.

Every bloody atrocity he had committed, every blow her betrayal had landed—all were present between them, not a barrier but an aphrodisiac. He knew the secret she had kept from him, and she knew the secret she had kept from herself: that she was not, after all, an empty shell, but a woman—a living amalgam of bodymindsoul who hated and desired this man.

Since they could not rip each other to shreds—not yet—they settled for clothing. The sound of tearing fabric as Kikyou set about destroying his expensive suit was nearly as satisfying as the sensation of her nails tearing into his chest a second later. Their breaths were as ragged as the edges of Kikyou’s dress, torn apart from neckline to waist so that Naraku’s rough mouth and rough palms could scrape over her ribs, a cage around a cage. The heels of her hands dug into his chest, his back, shoving and pulling, testing for weak spots. If she found one, she would push inside slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, until she sank in up to her wrists, until her hands closed around his heart. The slow, spreading stain of his blood would turn her arms red while she deliberated, trying to choose between squeezing or ripping or biting.

Instead, she reveled in the sharp pain as her lower back slammed into the sideboard. She let Naraku hoist her atop the thing and repaid him by breaking his skin in two new places, relishing the feel of the shreds of his flesh under her nails. She shivered as his fingers crawled up her thighs, taking the miraculously intact skirt of her ruined dress with them. She took revenge again, scratching her toes up his calf and digging her own icy fingers into the vertebrae at the back of his neck until he shivered, too. He shoved the fabric of her dress up around her waist—there was the slightest of clatters as the contents of her right pocket spilled onto the polished wood beneath her. Her orders—she had nearly forgotten. She held in a manic laugh, imagining what on earth she would tell her superiors if Naraku didn’t take her life after this. Could she tell them about the rush of cold air on her inner thighs as they parted, the goosebumps spreading over her skin, the trails of cooling saliva on her breasts and neck? Kikyou began to catalog evidence for them. Exhibit A: the dark purple marks she’d left on Naraku’s chest. Exhibit B: the way he shuddered as her hands bruised their way down his spine as if to snap it. Exhibit C: the way they _both_ shuddered as she found the dip of his lower back and guided him inside her, for what could have been the first time or the twentieth or the thousandth—who could say? It was the only time that mattered. It was the only time Kikyou was alive, her dormant serpent self stirring to hideous awakening.

And as he met her thrust for agonizing thrust, their eyes stayed locked in that way Kikyou had never been comfortable with before. She could read in his everything about him—could see past the ruthless drive to the pathetic, mangled, crawling thing, trapped alone in the darkness. She felt no pity for him—only disgust. At least the monster that hid in Kikyou’s heart was possessed of an ugly elegance, a vein of untapped strength. Stripped of his power and pretense, Naraku was less than vermin.

And yet. There was no feeling on earth like wielding her own unique power, now that she had embraced it and him. She was the only one who could get close to him, the only one who could destroy him with a look, a word. She had taken root like an abscess in his festering heart, and now it was hers to do with as she pleased.

She wondered what Naraku could see in the depths of her eyes, now that the raw truth of her was exposed. Whatever it was brought him immense satisfaction, if the savage delight with which he gazed at her was anything to go by. Kikyou yanked at his hair until his neck strained and his eyes watered enough to dilute the lambent fierceness there, and he shoved into her with twice as much force in retaliation.

Perhaps it was not enough to unveil the hidden parts of herself, thought Kikyou as the mingled pain and pleasure began to build inside her. He beheld the serpent now, but did not understand what it meant. _He still doesn’t know_ , she realized, tightening her legs around him and clawing at his shoulders, _whether he wants to ruin me or be redeemed by me._ It was getting harder to look at his face, handsome and feral and alight with triumph. The happier she made Naraku, the more she loathed him, and the more she loathed him, the more she wanted him.

She wanted to close her eyes so she could feel every last sensation. She must have been alive before now, at some point, but never like this. She could feel everything, _everything_ —sweat beading on her shoulders, blood rising to color her face and chest, air rushing into her lungs in jagged gasps. The delicious rawness of her skin wherever he touched her, the debilitating flare and fade of each tiny nerve ending as she fucked him. Kikyou surrendered to the impulse and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Look at me,” snarled Naraku, seizing her chin with one hand and forcing it upwards. Kikyou could tell from his voice that he was close. Her own climax was churning and boiling, licking up the walls of her body like flames—she opened her eyes and let go at the same moment he did.

They had been mostly quiet up until now, but for gasps and the scrape of the sideboard against the polished wood floor. Now a sound ripped free of Kikyou’s chest, ugly and primal, as Naraku choked out her name. She let her contempt for him tear through her along with her climax, rising like a flood from her toes to her skull until her eyes were the color of her hatred.

It was Naraku who looked away now, releasing her face and dropping his head to her shoulder, too anemic from the force of his own climax even to sink his teeth into her. Kikyou recovered first. He was in the serpent’s coils, utterly at her mercy. She let her hands fall back to her sides, fingers curling around the thing that had fallen from her pocket. 

There was something terribly inevitable about the whole episode, suspended now in a lurid tableau: Kikyou motionless in Naraku’s embrace, arms and legs open and impassive, not pulling him in or pushing him away. A still eon stretched out in the space of that moment as she contemplated her decision.

And then, in the next moment, it was made.

Naraku’s breaths against her shoulder evened out, signaling the return of his faculties, and Kikyou seized his face as he had seized hers. Her kiss was slow and intent and desperate. Her lips parted for him and he drank her in, greedy and triumphant, right up until the moment she pushed the tiny poison pill from her mouth into his. 

Red eyes went wide as Kikyou wrenched her face away and slapped her hand over his lips. The other hand, buried almost sweetly in his hair, gripped him with calm resolve, preventing his escape. Her legs tightened around him—he was still inside her as the capsule dissolved on his tongue, as her venom seared its way down his throat.

“Look at me,” said Kikyou, face placid as she watched his expression, tracking the poison’s progress. It wouldn’t take long.

He had wanted to see her, feel her, _know_ her, and she had granted his wish. There could be no truer knowledge than this—to die by her hand. _The serpent strikes because it must_ , thought Kikyou. This was the only resolution. Never mind that she had been ordered to kill him—orders were nothing. This was the reckoning they had always been hurtling toward. There could be no other ending.

Naraku did not struggle. His arms stayed locked around her as, one by one, the mechanisms of his body failed. And then there were no more breaths, and no more pulse against Kikyou’s fingers. 

Looking into his eyes, in the space between his last heartbeats and his death, she was seized by the bizarre urge to thank him.

And there—as the last seconds of his life bled away—was she imagining it? His eyes seemed to say, _fair enough_. In the next instant he was dead.

Kikyou released his corpse, feeling nothing as it crumpled to the floor. Just like that, Naraku had ceased to exist, and she—

She was still here.

_Now what_ , thought Kikyou. It wasn’t the true question. _Who am I without him?_ She’d had an answer once—but now? 

The flower, the serpent. It didn’t seem to matter any longer.

She reached into the undisturbed left pocket of her dress. Her fingers closed around the second pill.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally written for Narkik Weekend 2017. It was loosely inspired by a scene from X Company 1x03, appropriately titled "Kiss of Death." Lmk if you enjoyed it; I am a garbage human always Thirsty For Validation!
> 
> as always, you're also welcome to harass me on tumblr @boomerangst


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